


oh, shiver in the winds of a changing land

by TheTartWitch



Series: Harry Potter Canon Divergence [11]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Faerie!Harry, Harry has a grandmother, Harry's grandmother is stronger than Voldemort, Snape's there for like three seconds, basically just a fic idea, difference between witches and wizards
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-27
Updated: 2017-09-27
Packaged: 2019-01-06 04:27:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12203880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheTartWitch/pseuds/TheTartWitch
Summary: Harry's a faerie and never goes to the Dursleys.





	oh, shiver in the winds of a changing land

**Author's Note:**

> This is an unbetaed fragment that I liked, so I'm posting it. If someone wants to use this for stuff, have at it (just remember to credit me so I can check it out! :) Most of it is 'verse notes and Lucius Malfoy becoming a housecat. *shrugs*

Magnolia Evans, Lily Evans’ mother, wasn’t a Muggle. She wasn’t a witch, either: she was a faerie. One of the tall ones, with the pale faces and dagger-edged bone structure, not the little flying ones. Her husband didn’t know, of course; faeries had been breeding with Muggles for ages now, having realized it kept the blood strong, the power full and capable. 

It was just her luck, having one witch daughter and one powerless. She’d be the laughingstock of Faerie if this kept up.

\--

Harry Potter is not fully wizard. There is a part of him, loosely buried under genetics and magic and the way his mother smiles when he tries to eat his feet, that is stronger than anything. His grandmother knows it. She visits sometimes, when mummy and daddy have gone out and Uncle Padfoot is sleeping on the sofa, to whisper things to Harry and show him how to change his toys into living things that will obey him. She smiles at him, sometimes, and it’s cruel and awful and amazing and he knows, deep in the center of that power inside him, that she loves him more than anything: more than her daughters, more than her deceased husband, more than  _ mummy _ loves him. There is something fierce and terrible about her love, and Harry likes this kind better than any other kind.

And then mummy is gone and daddy is gone and Uncle Padfoot is gone and there is a man standing over mummy’s body and crying and promising promises he could never keep, and all Harry can do is wait for Grandmother to come back.

\--

The Muggles they leave her grandson with are reprehensible. She blames wizards; anyone with fae blood would have seen that this was a terrible idea. She doesn’t even care that one of them is her single remaining daughter. The fae blood had not chosen the girl, and so Magnolia need not either. 

The boy, though.  _ Dudley _ , was it? Magnolia would be back for him, the way she’d come for Harry, left on the porch in the cold like someone’s returned bicycle. They’d see if the blood held true for that one when the time came.

\--

Harry grows up with Grandmother. They don’t have a house like other families do; Grandmother says they’re cramped and tamed and she doesn’t like the absence of the earth beneath her. Out in the wild, in the magic forests where trees with move for you if asked politely and animals lead you back to the path or away from it depending on their mood and the time of day, she looks more like who he’d imagined her to be. Something so dear to him, so kind but so cruel, could never be human the way his laughing mummy had been. 

Her eyes were the color of the sky when dawning sunlight split it into streaks; her hair fire upon her scalp, flickering with the wind; her skin changed from paler than the clear ice on the ponds to darker than the trees’ bark in summer as she moved through the world. Harry wasn’t the same, really: there was witch blood in him, from his father. His eyes stayed green, his hair stayed black, his skin was always the same color. Grandmother said that didn’t matter, really; appearance did not indicate the amount of skill or power the fae held inside, simply their parentage. She didn’t often talk about mummy or her other daughter, whom she addressed only as “the other one” or “my smaller flower” or “the mother of your cousin, whom we’ll be fetching soon”. He wasn’t sure when “soon” was, exactly; time wound strangely with Grandmother. She had a difficult time understanding the needs for minutes or seconds, or watching the tracking of the days. So long as she knew the season and time of day, she knew when she was.

\--

Magnolia knew the witches were searching for her grandson. “Harry” wasn’t a name for the fae, but that wasn’t his mother’s fault. She hadn’t known what she was raising. She called him “Bittersweet” for the flower meaning ‘truth’, or simply ‘Grandson’. He called her only Grandmother.

The witches were searching for her boy. They didn’t know how close they’d almost come, nearly several paces away from where she sat with her young grandson. It was a good thing witches had no way of counteracting fae magic; she’d hate to accidentally kill one of her daughter’s friends. It was considered impolite by nearly all fae.

\--

Eventually, when Bitter (as he’d come to think of himself) was old enough for Grandmother’s protective tendencies and knew enough magic to protect himself if they were separated, she took him into witching spaces. Grandmother never referred to any magic people as ‘wizards’. 

“They’ve forgotten, but we have not. Witches are far different from wizards in terms of skill and magical abilities,” she tells him. 

He thinks he is older now than he used to be; time is getting harder for him as well to keep track of. His legs grow, almost the length of Grandmother’s, and it is easier to keep his limbs from whaling about, as Grandmother calls it, than it used to be. When he last saw himself, he was thinner but somehow steadier than he used to be, as though he had changed much but not in any real, noticeable way. It was hard to quantify, which is why he spent much of his time thinking on it. Being bored was boring, and he and Grandmother found many ways of distracting themselves.

“When I open the gate,” she’d say, “A great many of us, our kind, will come through to be here with us. Our family will come to us because the echo when they are gone inside of us is terrible, and family is always together. The fae will do anything for their family, no matter how terrible it may be.” 

They had not gone to retrieve Dudley. Grandmother had watched him in the ponds and lakes they’d passed and deemed him lacking of the power and unworthy besides.

\--

Diagon Alley is strange. It is as though he remembers it, the feeling of it, from a dream but has not actually ever been to the place. Grandmother tells him she feels the same. “They use echoes of our magic in these hidden places,” she murmurs quietly as they approach the goblin bank, their faces hidden by long grey cloaks. Grandmother had made them. She didn’t want to be seen or touched by witches, or allow them to do such to him. Goblins, she said, had much better manners, and far more respect for the fae.

No one else is wearing cloaks of quite the same make, nor covering their faces quite the same way, and thus they stand out. Bitter looks at the year on a passing witch’s moving newspaper. It confirms that he is eleven now, if he is remembering the year of his birth right. Grandmother says their memories are perfect, the fae’s, but he is part witch. There might be something to that that prevents complete accuracy of memory. 

\--

The goblins recognize Grandmother and bow low at the great doors, causing witches all around to stop and gawk. 

“My apologies, Great Lady, but all must remove their hoods before entering Gringotts.” One of the guards tells Grandmother, voice low and respectful, and she nods shortly. 

“Very well. Bitter, your hood.” They lower the fabric at the same moment, and a witch nearby curses low under their breath. Bitter has never seen Grandmother interact with another being this way; she is not cruelly mocking nor terribly bored with the goblins. They have earned her acquiescence, and thus they have earned his. He nods to the guards as they pass through the doors into the bank itself. 

Grandmother goes directly up to a teller, disturbing the witch already being served. He begs her pardon, stiffly, and Bitter notices the woman and child by his side, all similarly colored in hair and eye. The witch’s family, then. 

At eleven, Bitter is young to a witch. For the fae, he is grown and capable, but still in the hands of his eldest family member, Grandmother. That is where he shall lawfully remain until her death, and then he goes to the next eldest. That is how fae guardianship has always been, she claims. It is why he was not left with Grandmother’s second daughter; she was not fae or his mother, she did not have the right to him. 

Grandmother ignores the witch, as she usually does, and tells the goblin teller, “I must speak with your king. It is of importance, though I understand he is a busy ruler.”

The goblin is suddenly, instantly, unfailingly polite to Grandmother. He leads them away from the witches without even looking back, though Bitter does. The man is standing, watching them go with eyes narrowed. As Bitter stares, the man’s eyes catch on something on Bitter’s forehead. His mouth drops open slightly, and he shouts into the immediately silent bank:

“ **_HARRY POTTER?!_ ** ”

Ahead of Bitter, who is watching this all now with interest, Grandmother slams to a halt and returns to his side. The goblin is wringing his hands now, knobbly and a little cracked at the knuckles, and apologizes profusely to her. She waves his concerns away. It is not his fault witches have no sense of propriety. 

It is at this point Bitter realizes they are all staring at him. Glancing around reveals no answers. “Grandmother,” he asks quietly, “wasn’t that Father’s name? Potter?” 

“Yes, though it is of no consequence. His blood is not the kind to matter.” 

The blond witch appears to take offence. “At least his  _ pure _ blood was better than his wife’s, born to  _ muggles _ as she was!” Bitter can feel his Grandmother’s fury grow where he stands beside her, and calls to the witch, “But Mother wasn’t born to muggles. Her father was, surely, for Grandmother chose him for that trait, but Grandmother is anything but! Mother was born to a proud line of fae, and it isn’t her fault she was a witch instead of a proper fae! Grandmother knows it wasn’t her fault, and lays no blame with her.”

The room is quiet once more. Grandmother finally loses her temper.

“That is quite enough.” She hisses, a drumroll against the bank’s cool stone walls. She waves a hand at the witch, who blinks owlishly before he is suddenly a small golden cat, and turns to the goblin. “If our request cannot be met today, then we will return another time for an audience.”

“No, Great Lady!” Squeaks the goblin. “The king is available for you now, of course he is! We always value trade and business with Faerie, it is our pride and honour to serve the House of Magnolia.”

  
  


**Notes:**

 

  * ****Fae families are neither matriarchal or patriarchal. The eldest member, either aligned with dark or light, becomes family head upon the former’s death. If it was a murder, they avenge the dead as their first act. Their primary job is to protect the family from literally any outside threat and educate the young. Children do not study under their parents, but are all taught by their family head. Magnolia does not see taking Harry as kidnapping because she is acting family head. Raising Lily’s child is her right and responsibility.****


  * **Fae have little to no respect for witches in general, especially those who claim to be wizards. On Faerie, their home realm, wizards and witches are entirely separate. Witches are the more powerful and unrestrained of the two, whereas wizards have strict rules for magic usage and must have something to supply the power for any workings. Thus, any wizard claiming to be a witch is laying claim to power they do not have and vice versa. This is a grave insult to the fae, who see no point in lies amongst themselves and find it insulting to think they can be lied to. You cannot lie to a fae, but tricking is possible and actually entertaining to a bored fae.**


  * **Fae children grow at the rate of human children, but are considered to be adults at their guardian’s behest, which is generally when they could protect themselves. You could be a child for hundreds of years or only ten, as Harry is pronounced an adult after only ten years by Magnolia.**


  * **Having fae blood does not make you fae. Lily is born with witch magic instead of fae and is thus recognized as a witch by Magnolia. Petunia has little to no power and is thus not recognized at all by Magnolia besides as a bearer of her lineage (meaning at some point in Petunia’s descendants the fae blood could resurface, so Magnolia’s got to keep an eye out for more fae family).**



 

 


End file.
